


They Had Lights Inside Their Eyes

by lady_mab



Series: That which we cannot see [2]
Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Blind Character, Gen, angst angst angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_mab/pseuds/lady_mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy's departure from the team hit Lockwood a lot harder than he lets on. For a blind person, this makes things a lot more difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Lockwood & Co Big Bang! Thank you so much to [Emma](http://ofhauntings.tumblr.com/) for not only being my beta, but throwing the idea my way in the first place. Tune back in next month when I get art!!

He stomped forward with his usual sure footedness, carrying him away from George's questioning voice.

"You can't run away from this--" the other boy said as Lockwood struck something with his hip.

It almost doubled him over. His fingers glanced over the shape, feeling the solid form of the banister beneath his touch. How far it stretched (two shuffling sidesteps to the left, which allowed George the chance to catch up), how wide it was (one hand, and he shrugged off the grip on his shoulder). Pieces put together, he strode forward, careful to avoid the stairs.

He ducked and wove through the harmless Otherlight that floated through the entire first floor landing. The stairs, if he remembered Holly's detailed description, would wind up to the second floor. They had come in from the cellar, the only opening available. After that performance act of an entrance, slithering in on his stomach through a tiny window -- blind, completely blind -- so he could help tug George through, he would be damned if he stooped to asking for help now. He was stubborn enough to--

Lockwood swore loudly as he collided with... with something. His hands immediately moved to steady himself on the unmoving shape. The doorway to the living room, perhaps? 

"Blood hell, Lockwood." George's voice echoed from behind, he but he didn't turn. It wouldn't do any good anyway. He didn't even know what George looked like, beyond Lucy's descriptions (whispered between giggles, as her fingers pressed patches of warmth to his wrist, where a gap of skin appeared between sleeve and glove). "You're going to get yourself _killed_."

"You're supposed to be guiding me, not bumbling along ten paces behind!"

_Five, four, three_ \-- George stopped. Lockwood could sense the distance between them in the echo of the untaken stakes. The hall must be narrower than he first estimated. Would certainly explain how he managed to run into everything like a newborn giraffe.

"You're not letting me." George said this while standing a respectful distance away -- letting space exist between them. "Without Lucy, you--"

"This isn't about her," Lockwood snapped.

"It is!"

A ghost light flared in response to the emotion, a long-ago victim, restless, unable to find closure, latching onto the emotion long enough to be acknowledged before fading once more. He didn't flinch away from it.

Lockwood waited, and arched an eyebrow. (Lucy would always laugh when he did that -- or smack his arm. It hurt to think of that, that she would leave him -- _leave them_ so easily.)

George heaved a sigh and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Everything he did was loud, and Lockwood was thankful for that. He could understand the noise when no words were used. Lucy was too quiet, but that came with having to Hear things that no one else could. That he understood in its own way. "We used to function as a team before her. Just the two of us."

He didn't want to be reminded of that. His jaw worked, chewing on possible responses, before he merely spat out, "Yes. We did."

"What happened?" There was an uncertain noise that Lockwood didn't know how to interpret. "Did she really change you that much?"

He struggled to tamper the flare of irritation. "This isn't Lucy's fault--"

"Yes, it is," George repeated. There was another sigh, and Lockwood remained rooted to his spot as George took the remaining handful of steps to join his side. "And I know that her departure from the team has affected you more than Holly or I, but you can't keep going on like this." A beat of silence, then, softer, "You're going to get hurt."

He didn't know how to respond. He stood in awkward silence for a moment too long before his laughter started. "Oh? I am?"

"Lock--"

"No, stop. Did Holly put you up to this?"

"No one put me up to this. Christ, I'm worried about you. We both are, but Holly doesn't know."

He hesitated, cocking his head a degree to the side. "Pardon?"

"Holly doesn't know how you can get."

"How I can get?" He bit out the words, trying to use anger to cover his confusion -- the fact that he was trying to ignore the small voice saying _you know what he means_.

George hesitated as well, and Lockwood knew he was trying to parse through the tone to interpret the words. "After Robin died--"

Lockwood reeled back sharply, the doorway delivering a punch between his shoulder blades that served to knock the air out of his lungs. "This is nothing like that."

"No, at least you're still standing."

"Lucy is still alive. She left of her own accord."

"Then stop acting like it's your fault that she's gone!" George took a step forward, forcing Lockwood to retreat in kind as he felt the space close. "Stop beating yourself up over it!"

"It's my responsibility to keep the team together, and I failed." The words left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he spun on his heel to carry on in the direction that the lights ebbed. "But now is not the time to worry about that. Because you're right -- we did this before with just the two of us."

Before Lucy, after Robin. Honestly, it had always been George and Lockwood. He owed as much of his success to George as he did himself, and their fleeting third team member. Holly would have her time, before she got too old and removed herself from the picture. He would never ask her to leave when her Talent officially withered, because her pride would get the best of her.

Lockwood stepped into the room just beyond the offending door frame and was struck by a wave of cold, and twice in as many minutes he found himself breathless.

The cold was enough to shock him back into a proper state of mind. They were giving this case the usual Lockwood & Co. try, in that everything was coming back as a jumbled mess. He could already hear Holly scolding them after a wasted night when they would arrive back at the house the next morning.

"F-forty degrees," George explained, stepping in behind Lockwood. His teeth chattered in the sudden chill. "Reckon we found it?"

Lockwood spun in a slow circle, casting his Sight about the room. The one good thing about being blind was that there was nothing else to distract him. He had no clue what else was in the room beyond the vague idea of George's shape, and where the entry was two steps behind.

"Nothing beyond the standard glows," he confirmed, cautiously stepping further into the room.

The cold pulsed around him like a heartbeat, slow and steady and alive.

"Do you feel that?"

George's chains rattled and clanked on the hardwood floor. "I'm going to poke around a bit and take some readings. Stand in the chains until I get back."

Lockwood didn't quite appreciate being told what to do, but at the same time, George didn't wait around long enough to see if his command had been heeded. His footsteps sounded back down the direction they had come -- to pick up where they had broken off.

Lockwood paced in the direction of the chains, and saw something flit out of the corner of his eyes. He wheeled around and strained, ears attuned to the distance clutter of George enough to block that out.

A flash of light, blinding in the faint galaxy of Otherlight, zipped past and out through what was likely the wall next to the door.

He took off after it, shouting for George as he went. He drew his rapier with one hand, fished out a silver net with the other. He would follow it, corner it, flip the net -- easy. Routine.

His searching fingers found the banister, and he heaved himself up the steps. One, two, three, then he paced up them without the slightest hesitation.

"Wait--" George shouted, heavy steps slamming over the ground. "Lockwood, wait--!"

"Upstairs, George! It's on the room above--"

The distance between him and the light vanished in the space between one breath and the next, and when his foot moved to the next step, there was no resistance beneath it. His stomach dropped, and something bursts like an exploding star over his head.

In reality, Lockwood thought as gravity caught up to him, it was the missing stair that saved him from the Ghost Touch.

But it also caused him to plummet a floor and a half down into a dusty cellar.


	2. Chapter 2

Lockwood woke in the usual world of darkness, but it felt different somehow. It was quiet save for the soft, patient breaths of someone sitting next to him.

He blinked, futile but a force of habit, and started to turn his head toward the sound.

A hand landed over his eyes, and a shock as violent as the cold of the room the night before wracked his spine. He knew that touch, knew who it belonged to and uttered a soft sigh of frustration. 

The hand stroked back over his forehead, brushed his hair out of his face, and the guest found their voice before Lockwood did. "Keep pretending you're asleep, because that way I can at least spare one of us from Holly's lectures," Lucy murmured in amusement.

He blinked, or at least he thought he did, because the next thing he was aware of was that he was alone in his room and there were muffled voices from behind a closed door.

"You shouldn't be here--" George was saying.

"I know. I just wanted to apologize."

"How did you get in anyway? You gave back your key."

Lucy laughed, and Lockwood ached at how much he missed that sound. Actually, he just sort of ached all over, but perhaps that was because he fell and had no idea how long he had been unconscious or the extent of his injuries. "I can't believe Holly hasn't devised a system to change the location of the spare key at least once a week to keep out interlopers."

He could hear Holly's shoes on the hardwood floor as Lucy spoke. He might not have been able to Listen, but being blind certainly had its advantages beyond an improved Sight.

So while the other two were startled, he braced for the impact of her words. "I don't consider you an interloper, Lucy, just an inadvisable presence."

"I'm the one that brought this case to you," Lucy replied with equal poise. 

_She what?_

Lockwood struggled to push himself into a sitting position, not that it would do any good, not that anyone could see him, but the pain in his arms pulled a faint groan from him as he sank back into the mattress.

"You didn't tell him, did you?"

"We had no reason to."

"You're treating him like a fragile child."

" _You_ are the reason he's in this state in the first place."

 _No, no she's not,_ Lockwood wanted to argue, but he couldn't find his voice for a second time. His head swam when he tried to find the right order of words.

This time, Lucy's laugh was the harsh, unforgiving bark that he remembered her giving to adults when they crossed a line. "You mean unconscious in a bed? Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't realize--"

"You know what I mean," Holly interrupted, voice level, steely, enough to easily cut off any objection. "How dare you show back up here after that--"

"What good would lecturing me do? It's not like he knows that I'm here." (Oh, so that's what she had meant.)

George grumped audibly to get their attention. "With all your yelling and finger pointing, you'll wake the entire neighborhood at this point."

At least the two girls agreed that _shut up, George_ and _stay out of this, George_.

"All I am saying is, Holly," George said, "that cut Lucy a little slack. It's not her fault that Lockwood fell."

Ah, good ol' George. Escorting the elephant right out of the room.

"I came to apologize," Lucy repeated. "And I wanted to offer to help finish the case."

"Most splendid," was George's response.

"Absolutely not," was Holly's. "Professionally, you are our client. It would not do any good to have you take time out of your undoubtedly busy schedule to assist us. I will not speak my personal opinion on the matter, since you both are so keen on stepping around it."

There was a period of silence, in which Lockwood could hear Holly's annoyance even from behind the door, and he could sense George's uneasy shuffling. But from Lucy, there was nothing. To the point where he was starting to wonder if he had imagined her role in the whole thing and had hit his head far too hard on the fall.

But then Lucy sighed, and he tuned his ears to pick up any of her movements. "I could fire you from this case, if you want it to be like that. You would be paid for your troubles insofar, of course, but need I remind you that I am acting as an intermediary between _my client_ and Lockwood  & Co. My original contract with you on this investigation was due to my plate being too full. I am taking smaller cases, and while Madame Whistler hired me, it was at my personal discretion to suggest to her to let me ask for your assistance."

George made a great deal of noise, and Lockwood had no idea what sort of activity was going on outside. "As the senior agent in this room, what with the boss being unconscious in the other--" Lockwood squeezed his eyes shut for good measure, even though he was alone, even though no one had stepped in to check on him after Lucy-- "I would like to formally accept the offer for assistance. Lucy, if you don't mind, filling in to help bag the ghost tonight so we can wrap this up nice and neatly."

Holly sputtered for a brief moment before reeling it back in control. When she spoke again, it was the cool and calm that she always projected. "Fine." When the sound of her heels had completely retreated down the hall, George and Lucy shared a private, uneasy chuckle.

"Sorry you can't be here when Lockwood wakes up." His tone said _we miss you_ more than his words would have been able to manage, because George was not sentimental. "But don't think that we're going to give you a discount on account of you being a former team member, or because you're helping now."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Lucy said, and Lockwood had to imagine what her smile must have looked like when she said those words.


	3. Chapter 3

Lockwood woke up some undetermined time later to the sound of someone in his room. Soft noises, but not quiet. When a hand landed on his forehead, he jerked in surprise because he couldn't recognize the touch.

"It is just me," Holly murmured, her hand flitting away as lightly as her footsteps. "How are you feeling?"

He released a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. "Sore. A little cold."

"Would you like another blanket?"

It was the middle of a warm spring, he shouldn't logically need another blanket. That did not bode well, but she didn't sound terribly concerned about the offer.

"Please," he finally replied. "How long have I been unconscious?" He didn't think it would be a good idea to mention that he had been awake during the argument with Lucy in the hall.

She moved around his room with the quiet ease that she brought to all of her house chores since she had been hired. "Just a few hours."

When she didn't elaborate, he was forced to ask, "What happened?"

The blanket was tossed across his legs with a bit more force than was probably necessary. "Oh, you mean after you stupidly stormed off after a ghost and didn't consider the fact that you're _blind_? Or do you mean after you fell down a gaping hole in the stairs because you wouldn't listen to George trying to tell you to stop?"

From his previous investigations during the brief periods of consciousness, he had concluded that nothing was broken. Just bruised, possibly sprained, definitely sore. So he put on his best Lockwood smile and said, "Holly--"

"Don't you dare," she snapped. Then, gentler, but still stern, "Don't you dare turn that Anthony J Lockwood charm on me. You can't win every argument by being dashing."

"I seem to win a good number of them by being such."

"I am not a _good number_ , and you'd be best to remember that." There was a pause, and then the mattress shifts under her weight. "You had us very worried."

By _us_ , she was supposed to mean herself and George. Lockwood kept the memory of Lucy sitting on a chair beside his bed, fingers on his forehead, smile on her voice, locked away. "I know."

"Doctor says you avoided any Ghost Touch."

"Figured that fall must have been good for something."

"Lockwood, I'm trying to have a serious conversation right now. You could have injured yourself far more than a sprained wrist and dislocated ankle. You could have given yourself a concussion."

His hands flopped uselessly on his lap, then curled around the edges of the new blanket for a lack of anything better to do. "I could have stabbed myself with my rapier, I could have plowed headfirst into a Ghost -- my reckless behavior could have endangered George. I know, Holly."

He heard her breathe in, hold the air in her lungs, then release it slowly through her nose. "Then why did you do it?"

Despite everything, that wasn't a question he had been expecting. Why indeed? He was normally so cautious, and while the death of Robin had destroyed his confidence for quite some time (George refused to read the headlines, but he could hear it in the unread pages, hear it in the people that he passed on the street -- that a blind child had no right leading others in a Psychic Investigation team, that they needed adult supervision, that he needed a walking stick not a rapier--), he was more torn up about Lucy's departure than he had any right to be. So much so that Holly and George went so far as to remove any mention of her involvement in this case. They had made the conscious effort to hide it from him.

Lockwood tried for a little honesty when he wanted to hide behind smiles and humor. "I wanted to prove that I was still capable."

"Of being a bumbling, incompetent team that gets by on charm and luck alone?"

He took the bitter bite in stride. "Of being the leader."

"Oh, Lockwood," she said, tired and annoyed. And when he thought that she would leave it at that, Holly added, "When are you going to grow up?"

His jaw dropped, no quip coming automatically to his lips. He stared without being able to see in the direction her voice had come from, following the sound of her as she rose to her feet and continued to move.

Because he could not think of any better response, he started to laugh.

Holly stopped what she was doing and said, "What kind of answer is that?"

It was not a good answer, he knew that, but it was not a good question. "Grow up? And what, just be nothing but a blind boy? I already can't see, Holly. One sight got worse as the other got better, and you want me to just _grow up_?" The words came out on a snarl, surprising even himself.

He heard her faint gasp at his tone, and he spent a good long moment trying to wrangle everything back into place.

The only thing that happened was a short, barking laugh. "Sorry, but I would much rather not."

She exhaled sharply through her nose. Her lips must have been pressed into a thin line, and he wondered if her arms were crossed over her chest. He tried to picture it, but the only thing he could imagine was a nine year old's impersonation of a person in crayon, and it scared him to think that he was starting to forget anything other than the world of black and Otherlight.

He wanted to keep reacting, to keep yelling and pulling emotion from a part of him he had thought long closed off. He wanted Lucy to be back, for the four of them to work together as a team, for her to lean in and describe the world to him like she used to. "I'm tired," he said, and hated the way he sounded so small and pitiful with those two words.

But they worked. Holly adjusted his blankets, told him there were painkillers on the table by his bed and a cup of water, then left him to his thoughts.

Lockwood closed his eyes, the memory of being able to shut away the things he didn't want to see a small comfort. Then he sunk further into his pillows and blankets and tried to convince himself that it would work out.

Because he wanted it to. Because it had to.

He might have fallen asleep, but it always was hard to tell one darkness from another.


End file.
